


A McSmile Costs Nothing

by tostitos



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: ??? kinda, Crack, Fast Food, Fluff, Humor, M/M, McDonald's versus Burger King, everyone is a disaster, mentions of hyung line - Freeform, this fic is a disaster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-13 07:52:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15359730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tostitos/pseuds/tostitos
Summary: in which minhyuk is a miserable mcdonald's employee and kihyun is the (cute) guy who comes in way too often for chicken nuggets





	A McSmile Costs Nothing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [indemnis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/indemnis/gifts).



> bella, my dear, i'm both sorry and not sorry at all for this so i hope you enjoy it??
> 
> also i haven't been to burger king in a million years idk what's on the menu anymore  
> [twt](https://twitter.com/monstazet)|[blr](http://at-tostitos.tumblr.com)|[cc](https://curiouscat.me/tosties)

Minhyuk will never forget the day life spit in his face and called his mom a middle class woman who reads erotica and uses it as a reference to point out his father’s weaknesses in bed. It started out pretty ordinarily — the clouds that had plagued the area for the past half week broke to reveal that bright, beautiful ball of skin-melting gas; that one disgruntled driver of the 110X bus tried to close the doors before Minhyuk even stepped on; Hyungwon was reading all of his texts but not responding to them. The usual. No weird, supernatural bad omens to clue Minhyuk in that everything was going to go to absolute shit. Unless dropping his phone screen-down counted, and it didn’t because the chemistry between his phone and any surface that could shatter it beyond repair was practically magnetic.

So walking into the Burger King with the shiny windows and the larger than life-sized cutout of the King to ask why he hasn’t been contacted back about his application and being told ‘oh, sorry, we filled all the positions…but you can try the McDonalds down the street’ was, as one could imagine, pretty fucking traumatic.

He thinks about that horrible day every time he walks past the Burger King on his way to work, every minute that he’s _at_ work, on his way home, when he’s lying in bed thinking about going into work the next day.

“When is the ice cream machine being fixed?” Jooheon asks as he slips around Minhyuk to fill a white, plastic cup with sweet tea. “Any longer and I think those high schoolers who always come in are going to trash the place.”

Changkyun curves his shoulder into himself as he fills a red, paper sleeve with limp fries, hiding how he shoves three into his mouth. “It was fixed yesterday.”

“Obviously not because it’s still broken.” Jooheon caps the cup and returns to the counter where he places it on a tray. He picks up a double cheeseburger and takes the offered fries from Changkyun, arranging them next to the iced tea. Handing over the tray, he smiles at the customer who goes off to find a seat.

Minhyuk sees Jooheon turn to him out of the corner of his eye.

“Dude, are you dissociating?”

Changkyun nudges him on his other side. “You’re always so sullen. Where’s your McSmile?”

Minhyuk really doesn’t go a day as a McDonald’s employee without reliving the trauma.

 ♡

Minhyuk is lazily swirling a mop through a sticky puddle of grape soda when _he_ walks in. It’s a Wednesday, so it must be around two o’clock if he’s walking up to the counter and looking up at the menu.

He comes in every other day during the week, shoulder bag slung across his chest and milk chocolate with extra milk colored curls loosened by the heat in some kind of artful disarray atop his head. Just the sight of him and the sweat beading along collarbones exposed by the unbuttoned neck of his shirt makes Minhyuk’s lips twist into a scowl.

“A ten piece McNugget and a small fry?” Jooheon says before the man at the counter opens his mouth to order. “Kihyun, you get the same thing every time. Why are you even looking?”

“Maybe I wanted to switch it up. Don’t act like you know me,” says Kihyun. He flips open his bag and from inside pulls out his wallet.

“But nuggets are literally all you get. You bought a fifty piece box for yourself back when we were doing that promotion for the Olympics.”

A blush stains Kihyun’s ears. It’s not cute, because Minhyuk could never find someone who eats here out of desire cute, but Minhyuk commends Kihyun’s body for being able to produce such a pleasant shade of pink.

“They’re addictive,” Kihyun slides over the money for his meal, pout pushing at his thin lips at the teasing.

Minhyuk doesn’t mean to scoff and gag in the same breath but he nonetheless ends up sounding like he’s gargling on blood and the last of life.

Kihyun glances over at him, an eyebrow disappearing further up behind his hair and because Minhyuk isn’t a punk, he holds his gaze.

Right up until a kid with a cup bigger than the size of his head trips right in front of him and spills orange juice all over his shoes.

 ♡

As expected, Kihyun shows up two days later and orders his usual nuggets and fries. Minhyuk’s the one who rings him up this time, lazily pushing the buttons on the register.

In the months since Minhyuk has worked there and watched Kihyun pick up nearly the same order almost every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, he’s kept his mouth shut. And maybe he shouldn’t have stayed up until 4am playing Fortnite or maybe he’s just tired of watching a cute boy disrespect himself by eating this garbage food three times a week, because he slips and his tongue shapes words before he can stop it.

“You should love yourself and eat something better.”

Kihyun pauses with his fingers pinched around a crinkly won bill. He looks up at Minhyuk, sharp eyes a little round, and blinks.

“Excuse me?”

Cursing himself internally and hoping Kihyun isn’t the ‘I-want-to-speak-to-your-manager-over-this-dumb-thing’ type, Minhyuk plasters on his fakest McSmile. “Would you like barbecue sauce with that? Honey mustard? Ketchup?” he asks, attempting to deflect.

Kihyun makes a face and finishes counting out the exact amount he needs to pay. “Well, I’m a university student. Can’t really go to a gourmet restaurant for lunch when I can’t even pay for textbooks,” he says, laying the money on the counter.

Minhyuk might be a dropout but he remembers those days and can sympathize. Still—

“There’s a Burger King right across the street,” he points out. He quickly counts the money and files it in the register.

“So?” Kihyun raises an eyebrow. “Fast food is fast food.”

“You can’t call McDonald’s ‘food’.”

“Do you know where you work?”

The question almost makes Minhyuk laugh but despair takes any and all humor out of the exchange.

Kihyun saying ‘and I can’t get chicken at Burger King,” snaps Minhyuk back into reality before the memory of the day Burger King rejected him replays in his head in 4K resolution.

“You can get chicken fries!”

“Sounds like a shitty substitute for chicken nuggets.”

“They are not! They’re better!”

Changkyun jiggles a black tray with Kihyun’s order on it beside them and Minhyuk flinches. He thought Changkyun was on burger assembly.

“Can you stop trying to shoo away our customers, you McTraitor?”

Minhyuk snorts but the sound is mostly soulless. “I can’t be a traitor to something I never pledged allegiance to.”

Changkyun snorts back. “You’re a McDonald’s employee. You’re one of us.” He smiles at Kihyun as the student takes his late lunch.

Kihyun chuckles. “Maybe you should see if Burger King is hiring,” he says and Minhyuk decides in that moment that he really doesn’t like the curly haired cutie.

 ♡

“Hey, Ronald McDonald, when do you get off work? Hyunwoo and Hoseok are bugging me about going to the gym and I need a credible excuse to get out of it since they started checking my alibis,” Hyungwon, Minhyuk’s lazy best friend, says as he passes over a bag filled with the Whopper and onion rings he sent an SOS for an hour ago after his manager pushed back his break for the third time.

Minhyuk is starving and while he _could_ eat the fries like Changkyun, he’s loyal to the big BK and would rather starve. Or beg his best friend to smuggle him food in between his classes.

“You really get people to bring you Burger King for lunch?”

Minhyuk glances over to see Kihyun approaching the counter and frowns.

Hyungwon laughs. “Yeah, he’s weird.”

Kihyun laughs along with him and the sound is boisterous, yet, in a way, still restrained — unlike how Hyungwon sounds like all three hyenas from the Lion King at one time.

“Won, you’re supposed to have my back.”

Hyungwon shrugs. “Not my fault that you’re such a McHater and get so defensive about mystery meat burgers.”

“Burger King uses real meat!”

“Whatever you say, Plankton. They’re still not letting you work at the Krusty Krab,” says Hyungwon as he takes out his phone. “You gonna tell me when you get off work or what? I’m trying to not get my bones liquefied by The Beefy Boys.”

Sighing, Minhyuk tells Hyungwon when he clocks out and musters up a half-hearted wave when his friend says he needs to go and catch the bus back to campus.

“You’re really obsessed with Burger King, huh,” Kihyun says with another chuckle.

Minhyuk rolls his eyes. “I don’t want to hear that from someone who comes here three times a week.”

Shrugging, Kihyun leans against the counter. “I never said I wasn’t obsessed too. Except I don’t really care about McDonalds as an establishment, I just really like chicken nuggets.” He shakes his curly fringe out of his eyes and looks over Minhyuk’s shoulder. “Can I get an M&M McFlurry?”

Minhyuk rings up the dessert on the register with a surprised hum. “What? No nuggets?”

“I went somewhere else for lunch,” Kihyun answers and takes out his wallet.

After the exchange of bills and coins, Minhyuk turns to fill the order – the machines are working again, for however short amount of time before they inevitably break down for the millionth time. He sprinkles a hefty spoonful of chocolate candies over the vanilla ice cream and fits the cap over the top of the cup as he returns to Kihyun at the counter.

Kihyun takes the ice cream with a sweet smile that _doesn’t_ make Minhyuk’s stomach do cartwheels and a thanks. “By the way,” he mixes the M &Ms into the ice cream and then lifts a small spoon to his mouth to slurp it up, “I have to admit: chicken fries aren’t that bad, but they are a shitty substitute for nuggets.”

He has the audacity to _wink_ before pivoting on his heel and leaving the fast food joint.

Minhyuk blinks, jaw hanging open a little bit in his stupor.

Changkyun slings an arm around his shoulder, smelling like grease and with a single cooked hamburger patty in his grasp. He takes a bite out of the patty and sighs. “If your vendetta against McDonald’s scores you a date, I’m going to be McDisgusted.”


End file.
